Tangling it All: Make, Bake, Create (by sarah)

It's March and as I am not a hardy gardener, March is the beginning of my growing year. Which means that we have been along to the allotment and I've (yes me!!!) dug a bed over and harvested a load of leeks and so on but mainly I've been potting seeds up and transferring things into bigger pots with the two girls.

They both love this - but Mary most of all - I took over the dinning table for three days and she spent hours each day filling plant pots for me 🙂

She also loves watering them all, as does Jean so I have to be careful not to end up with little "floods". Mary also thinks that watering can is a musical instrument - she is not wrong and I am glad I don't use it for any fertalisers or anything!

(photo)

This weekend was heavy on the garden stuff - I sorted out the chicken run so that we could use the old flooring as stuff to dig into the allotment. This is quiet heavy work and I also have to sort out the wormeries and see how much compost I have ready to go in them. The answer was several bucket loads! I also had to fix two of the sumps which is a bit ick as they are by nescesity under all the liquid that settles at the bottom of the wormeries. This stuff is basically liquid plant food which is why I collect it and my tones of tomatoes last year proves that it works!

And though I now have new funky plant pots on the window sill in the dining area I also have various pots that have been painted either by me or the girls. This for me is an interesting cross over of the craft and the gardening. I even have two that I painted back when I was a Ranger (top section of Guiding).

That was not the only craft cross over either - I'm having a finishing projects month and though not a project that was already started - I have had this idea for ages (years) so we went ahead and did it 🙂

We made plant or seed markers out of knives by dipping them into metal paint we have left over from Alaric making his ladder. We also did some spoons to make Easter Eggs for plant pots decorations and the garden.

Alaric and Jean set up a drying rack by using an old kitchen tidy and a length of metal and clamps. Clingfilm was placed beneath to catch drips.

He then showed Jean how to dip the spoons.

She then had a go and was very careful and patient.

She did all the spoons and knives and Mary helped Daddy find the right size dog clips to pin them all up to the drying rack.

The paint is supposed to be touch dry in an hour but it was on quiet thickly so we left it over night.

The next day we took sharpies and took to decorating the spoons as easter eggs and the knives as seed markers (ok so I did all the knives but we all did the eggs including Alaric and Mary).

I'm not sure how well this will work and this first lot are going out without varnish, the sharpie pics we did on the chair at the allotment have faded but that maybe due to the under laying paint flaking - we will see - it's an EXPERIMENT!!!! mwhahahahahahahaha

Jean spent ages on decorating her ones.

I am very very happy with the seed markers 🙂

Infact we are going to have to do a couple more batches as I have a lot more stuff planned for the growing!

I coloured the inside of my Easter Egg spoon with a chick - Mary decided she had to do one too and demanded the colours "ellow, norange and black" and then with a stroke of genius announced that the back of her chick needed to be fluffy yellow as it was already crick crack hatched!

Well I was impressed - I was equally impressed by Jean's sheep and tree 🙂

I love these Easter Egg Spoons 🙂

I don't think you can tell which one of us did which egg to be honest 🙂

The only issue is that you can't let them touch each other or various plastics as they stick.

Mary is most pleased with her flower pot 🙂

And it is great fun to mix the crafts in with the gardening, things like bird scariers and wind chimes are fun to make and practical too. But this weekend kind of had the cake and the icing and the eating 🙂 For a start CHICKENS that lay stoopid numbers of eggs which always equals cake but second...

I grubbed up some potatoes that I've been growing in the big bags we used to move with three years ago. This is the third year of potatoes in the garden. They are lovely new tatties so small and firm and Alaric being the whizz that was whipped them up into a gorgous curry that was dairy, gluten and soya free and found naan breads I could eat too! There were even star anises in the top 🙂

And this? This is my purple chilli 🙂

I basically grew the chilli plants from seed all the way through the winter and autumn and I had chillies in Feb! And as promised by the packet they are all different colours 🙂

I am so excited about this, I have never managed them from seed before!

Basically this weekend we managed to do gardening, craft and cooking and the boundaries between them were blurred and in truth there was DIY too which crossed over very nicely too 🙂

p.s. we also took Jean to two different sporting clubs and a sleep over.

Chillies in Feb! (by sarah)

Ok so I thought I'd have a go at growing my chilli plants through the winter so that they could be big and strong and go outside for our summer. I didn't use lamps and I got a bug infestation and my dad forgot to water them when he was in charge of them but I still have a few plants and in February they have started to produce chillies!

I am hoping to put them in bigger pots this week too 🙂

This is the first chilli from seed success I have had! The last lot I'd gotten as little seedlings.

Of Chickens and Candles and Holes (by sarah)

This weekend has been absurdly busy, for a start I have finally been putting the attic back together after the whole roof fixing of last year! Then there were chickens! It was time to fetch our new rescue chooks - these ones are slightly less rescued than the previous lot as they came from a free range farm and so are a lot perkier than the first lot were initially. They also look better with already red combs and wattles.

It was getting dark by the time we got back with them so photos are not brilliant I'm afraid. Felix who is one of the original four, is not impressed as she is in the rabbit run whilst they settle in.

She was always quiet pecky so we shall have to see how introductions go!

We had planned on getting four hens but when we got there they had spares, so we ended up with 6. Their names are:

1) Squwashy - apparently this is something minecraft related that Jeany has picked.

2) Rose - named by Mary, she didn't give a reason

3) Chris - a chicken scheme programmer as picked by Alaric

4) Pete - another chicken scheme programmer

5) Tardis - this is my chicken 🙂

6) Firefly - this is my dad's chicken and apparently the most intellegent of all the dinosaurs.

They laid an egg on the way home and have since laid 3 more - we had fried eggs for dinner. The run looks so much better with chickens in it 🙂

The weekend also saw Alaric drilling holes in the walls.

Apparently I didn't want this part of the house! No he isn't just randomly destroying the house - he is network cabling so that we can have proper internet in all the rooms in the house etc...

Also the compressor was the best buy EVER! It now unsurprisingly has a hole saw attachment.

Last but certainly not least - Jeany has been wanting to do some more of her candle making for ages, in sorting the attic I discovered just how many candle ends we had accumulated - to be fair friends do post her candle ends to melt down.

This is her main craft activity that she does with Alaric, and it is also her little business which she started years ago now 🙂

Infact the square moulds that came with the starter kit that... erm... started it all broke, so this is the last batch of square candles until she sells some candles and buys a square mould with the money.

It was a pretty epic weekend to be honest.

Cat Love :) (by sarah)

It was Valentines Day and the table was set for a lovely meal, the hoomins had all been working really hard on it, both the bigs and the small bigs or as Lithium liked to think of them... THE KITTENS.

The Kittens were fearsome lovely things and were fine as long as you made sure you only go strokes and NOT hugs. Kisses weren't too bad but there were a bit snotty and drooly in general so Lith felt they were best avoided.

Sparkly hearts and beads and glitter had taken over the house the last few days and now there was a wonderful food smell wafting from the kitchen. Lithium's tummy rubbled - she was a very hungry cat.

She looked up at the table, it was all set out with place mats and candles and what not. It looked so lovely and the hoomins always brought the food to the table so it made sense that the place to be was on the table. The only problem was... Lithium was not allowed on the table. She walked around the table three times trying to decide what to do and then checking that the hoomins were all busy she hoped up onto a chair and then onto the table.

And... promptly settled down!

When the hoomins came in they stopped and stared at Lithium, normally they shouted and told her to get off the table but this time they oohed and ahhed and the biggest of the Little Bigs stroked her and scritched behind her ears.

Lithium made sure she was right in the corner of the table - cats like corners, it was because it was very mathematical and cats like maths. She sat at a special angle cutting the corner into two triangles - it was lovely.

But she didn't remain that way for long, with everyone moving about the candle flame started to flutter, looking exactly like a small thing to be caught and if not eaten then chewed alot!

Ears pricked to attention she prepared to leap and take down her foe!

But the light went off and a small big distracted her and explained that the candle was hot - she would have burnt her paw! Horrified Lithium reached out her paw to the Hoomins for inspection - just incase she had accidently burnt it anyway.

The Littlest Little Big assured her it was ok, she even kissed her! Now Lithium was drooly and had to groom her fur clean by licking and licking, everyone knew that cat drool was hygienic unlike hoomin drool.

Then she settled down and with a bit of petting began to purr loudly.

But after a while Lithium got bored, there was still lots of lovely cooking smells but where was the food?

She began to mew pathetically but all that happened was the Little Bigs stroked her which was all very nice but not what she had in mind! FOOOOOOD!!! Hoomins could be so silly sometimes!

Complaining meoawly she got them to put the light on again - it had nothing to do with the lost spoon and bad eyesight of one of the Bigs.

It had been very Catmospheric with the lights out, Lithium had to agree and so they put the light out once more and they sat in the flickering candle lights.

Finally the food showed up, Lithium's nose twitched and she sniffed at it but there was no meat 🙁

Poor Lithium had forgotten that the Biggest Big, the one that went all the way up to the sky, he only ate grass like things. Hoomins were so strange. Feeling disappointed she meaowed and licked his hand.

But the the Medium Big or was she the Smallest of Big Bigs? Got up from the table and went and got a special tasty from the fridge which she put on Lithiums fish shaped plate. Lithium jumped off the table and rubbed herself all round Mummy's Puss-Big Hoomins feet and then chowed down on the lovely yummy that had been put out for her.

It was a lovely Valentines Day for everyone.

(This story is part of The Wiggly Pet Collection)

The Allotmenting Begins! (by sarah)

So we kind of didn't get to the allotment in Nov, Dec or Jan except to pick up brussels for Christmas. At the weekend we popped down there to a) pay the annual fee and b) to check out exactly what needs doing.

I picked the last of the cabbages and pulled a leek and eyed up a few of the other things that are supposed to still be there and was very please. Yes it is not neatly rotavated like a lot of the other plots but when I think of what it looked like when we took it on!

We also put out boundary string back up and started forming plans 🙂

I am hoping that it will be good weather this coming weekend so that we can spend one or two hours there again as at the very least I want to move my worm juice stock there (the liquid I drain out of the wormeries is basically plant food and good to mix in with the water for some crops).

The drawings we did on the chair have all come off which is no bad thing as it simply means the girls get to do new fresh designs this year 🙂

Yes that's the little dragon from the weekend Symmon - he is coming on outings and being photographed for some Wiggly Pet Blog stories 🙂 Here's a closer shot.